let's say you're working on yourself and let's say you recognize that you're in this relationship that isn't healthy and so you recognize these turbulent moments and so now you start to work on yourself how do I show up what is the pre-work that I can do um and the narcissist partner spots it they start to see that you are now becoming stepping into your own you're now being becoming independent you are now taking ownership over how you show up I mean you're shaking your head like that they don't want you to be strong they don't
want you to succeed they don't want you to get away and they sure as heck don't want you to be independent narcissism is about dominance power and control so this idea that they want you to fly off and then achieve your potential not so much because that's a threat to them you will never be able to soar higher than the narcissist can right in fact there's an old an old children's fable it's called The Eagle in the Ren and the Eagles obviously could fly much higher than all the other birds and so they decide to
have a big contest to see which bird could fly the highest well the ren is a small bird so the rent talked into the Eagle's feathers and then at the very top of the race it went over the eagle you would think like go Ren but actually in the story that all the other birds like kind of kill the Wren they Peck the rent to death how dare you do this to The Eagle right so it's like the fairy tales even sort of enable the the I guess in this case the eagle is the narcissist
but the narcissist sets up the game that nobody gets higher than them so let's say you're with a narcissist who's killing it like they're doing great right they may actually be able to tolerate a partner getting up to a certain level but never exceeding them right so that's why somebody people say no there's this person and they're yeah they're narcissistic but their partner's doing well I'm like oh it's a partner doing better and they're like no but they're doing well I said it's not maybe well compared to you the sure as hell isn't better than
the narcissist so narcissistic people when they sense and in fact when you even get out of a relationship with them they will and they see you getting happy they'll ruin that happiness they can't the to the to the narcissistic person the only frame of reference is theirs how dare you you go succeed and be happy I'm going to wreck this for you and so if you're in the relationship with them and I think a lot of people are thrown by this and narcissistic relationships because early on they'll be oh that's cool and I'm that's like
they'll almost think that this new person's success will reflect well on them but over time if they sense that that person's success is going to Eclipse theirs or things aren't going well for the narcissist and the person with them is actually doing better The Narcissist will shut that down they and that that right there in a healthy relationship both Partners support the success of the other that's how we know it's a healthy relationship so it's not a person saying they're getting successful I better knock them few down a few notches so they don't they don't
get uppity or they don't leave me right that's the insecurity and there is that insecurity for narcissistic folks despite the power the dominance the control which makes them look like a bully they're actually also afraid of being abandoned and left behind because at the core of them is very they're very fragile so when we feel when they feel that fragile and you're not in touch with that fragility you're going to dominate a person who's in touch with their fragility may say gosh my partner is really succeeding and I I'm a little worried like am I
gonna you know I sometimes wonder if I can keep Pace or they're going to want to keep me around and then that becomes a conversation saying I am so happy for you and yet I'm having this this sort of neurotic fear and a healthy partner would say hey I you know this is us together and they'll they'll be a soothing and then that other person will hear that and won't stay as much in that neurotic space and will actually in the succeeding part will say hey I see this potential in you like let's use the
success I'm having to uplift you and then both boats rise but that's only in a healthy relationship in a narcissistic relationship no and I think people get thrown by The Narcissist not being happy for them and then I've seen a lot of people blame themselves saying oh what was I thinking telling them my good news when they weren't having a good day you should it's a relationship you should always be able to share you shouldn't have to think like oh let me assess what kind of day they've had before I tell the fragile narcissist my
good news so they don't go crying and yelling and screaming that's not a relationship that's really toxic babysitting so if you're in this relationship then and you're starting to see all this and you try to put up boundaries like you know look don't let some you know this person's a narcissist don't let them cross you so you're starting to work on yourself you're starting to put up these boundaries you're starting to try and gain more confidence and you know that the narcissist is never going to like that to your point and so I've heard you
talk about they'll try and punish you yeah so where is that fact so a I'd love to talk about the types of punishments that people can recognize that behavior and then B so where is they're left to go like are you able to still put up boundaries in a narcissistic relationship or is that always going to be met with a narcissist coming with a sledgehammer to try and break them your boundaries are never going to work in a narcissistic relationship because when you set boundaries you're exerting an equal amount of power you're saying we're not
we're not doing this you're saying you're basically saying I have power and worth in this relationship too and there's no room for that in a narcissistic relationship they're not going to hold space for someone exerting their own sense of self so you don't get to have boundaries in that relationship so that's not even an option how there's a lot of different ways that narcissistic people punish people they abandon people they withhold from people they humiliate people they embarrass people publicly they um they find a little mistake someone makes so let's say a person is um
succeeding they're in a narcissistic relationship but things are going well but then one day something doesn't go well the thing you're building and there's a bad meeting or someone turns you down the narcissist will say oh well someone was getting ahead of themselves so they'll mock you and they'll passive agree passive aggressively bait you but it's all punitive you know whether it's in your face whether it's passive aggressive or whether it's them withdrawing and for some people they'll say oh if I succeed I'm going to lose my partner to which I say them what the
hell kind of relationship is this does that come back to the fear then it's like you know yes it doesn't feel like a great relationship but you know I assume narcissists very much will use like wow you're going to be all alone what are you going to do without me I think I've told you in a past episode that I had an ex-boyfriend that said to me No One's Gonna Love You as much as I love you like they start to use that language to press on the fear buttons that you have so that the
idea of fear it's most extreme is what we see in sort of coercive or coercively controlling relationships where everything is governed by fear but I'd argue that fear is the heart of the narcissistic relationship right it's fear that they're going to leave you it's fear that you're going to say the wrong thing it's fear of their rage it's a fear of saying the wrong thing you're constantly afraid of doing or saying or being the wrong thing so as a person is in a narcissistic relationship they shrink they shrink to something that can never offend or
get attention away from or bother the narcissistic person and they also become quite isolated so because there's a lot of Shame now that you shrink you don't even want people to see your shrunken self so you withdraw and you lose that support and that support is essential if you're going to ungaslight yourself the only way to ungasslight yourself is to have people supporting the reality that you witness and see so that the fear governs everything in a narcissistic relationship but also leads to their societal fears people are afraid of being single people are afraid of
being alone people are afraid they're getting older if they want children they can't have children these kinds of these kinds of fears that might even be independent of the narcissistic relationship but yet the person stays in it because they might say well this person does make money and and like there's these these sort of those societal check boxes like successful or attractive or whatever they may be and I want to say the check boxes need to be respect compassion kindness safety new check boxes new checklist but it's that idea too of how people will pathologize
people for leaving what looks at least on paper like a good relationship and then the fear people have of am I going to always live alone am I going to grow old alone to which my response is usually I don't think you're going to grow old alone but alone is better than this at least you can cultivate friendships and go on a vacation without being screamed at and purchase non-generic food without being yelled at whatever it is that's getting the narcissist goat like you can do these things without constantly living in fear but Lisa I
got to be frank with you because I work with people of all ages from as young as like late teens all the way to their 70s and 80s and as people get older that does become a fear they'll say it's hard to date when you're in your 60s or 70s and people say it's it feels more unsettling to be alone when I'm older but there's a real tragedy in the sense of I said you're nuts if you think this narcissistic person is going to take care of you as you get older and more infirm and
in fact the Heartbreak for some people is they endure years decades of a toxic abusive fear-inducing narcissistic relationship well at least I won't be old alone when I'm old they do get sick break a hip whatever and they're older that narcissist doesn't want to take care of them and after all those years they recognize they actually were alone all along ow so I know I'm telling you this story on the back end and we're talking about first dates but I gotta tell you folks that first date as nuts is what I'm going to say is
going to sound you're 28 you're a beautiful young thing the world is your oyster someday someone else may be wiping your ass you better be sure that they're off to the job love that ShakeOut that was so fire it never dawned on me it never dawned on me that you're hoping because you don't want to feel alone so you think that you're acting um to protect yourself and then when you get there it never dawned on me that there's no way they're even gonna be there to take care of you so that was so freaking
fun um okay there was so much there I really want to touch on when you were saying about how you shrink when a narcissist is really trying to pull you down in those moments of shrinking I would assume things like your self-esteem how you see yourself or go down with it like you don't think of yourself very highly um maybe the your view on the world changes maybe your own um morals may change I'm not quite sure what words to use there um and I've seen people who've done that and it leads to them now
not acting in accordance with who they want to be so they basically sync to The Narcissist level because they're getting hurt the narcissist is throwing words at them it hurts it stings over time they shrink lower and lower they feel worse about themselves and now they're in a position where in those moments where the narcissist is making them feel very very small the only defense mechanism they have is to um throw hate back at them to throw words at them and maybe the narcissist is used to them that also breaks my heart because now you're
becoming a person that you don't want to be right how do we prevent that or not all but and if you find yourself doing that how do you get yourself back out so that you don't see yourself as being a cool person a mean person so anyone who's tuning in today can actually circumvent all of that I'm going to tell you what I tell people on my YouTube all the time people I work with all that which is don't go deep what do I mean by don't go deep and I've said that here on on
women of impact before don't defend don't engage don't explain and don't personalize the don't engage is a big piece okay you're going to shout back you're going to attack back because you still think there's hope here if you've ended all hope then you're not going to engage with the person right so I am not going to start having an argument with somebody I don't know there's no there's no point I don't know this person there's no Stakes but the the getting into it with the narcissistic person using their language against them they're not listening to
you if I can only reiterate something they are not listening to you they don't care what you have to say they don't view you as a separate human being with separate needs and wants they don't care so that can help you hold back from the edge of no matter what I say to this person it doesn't matter so I'm just not going to say anything and you can because I agree with you what some happens for some people is after spending enough time in the abyss they after peering into the abyss they fall into the
abyss right they they become the monster and that is not unusual because you're engaging with this this this difficult cruel person so much and then then it does really feel like the narcissistic person is winning but in a way what we do is we acculturate to our circumstances right so if I move to another country right now I would start learning the language I would dress the same way I'd learn their food and their Customs right I had a cultury and it's healthy acculturation right but there can be unhealthy acculturation so you may move to
a place where actually you're having to become a lot more I don't know defensive or have to live in a way that's much more edgy because it's not as safe and then you try to bring that back to your life that was saving people like what are you doing you know and it's the same thing in a narcissistic relationship you acculturate and you acclimatize and you assimilate to the culture of the narcissist and you become something you don't like to spot a narcissist ask these questions and find out tell me the story of you tell
me how you spend your days okay you ask those two questions you're going to get a lot of data pay attention the other thing you need to pay attention to this third thing is not a question it's how do you how are you feeling in your
